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savinhill
Mar 28, 2010

A human heart posted:

Wow, that's really profound.

Why do you have such a resentment against Bakker, or even the mere existence of a thread discussing his books, which you self admittingly haven't even read?

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A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

savinhill posted:

Why do you have such a resentment against Bakker, or even the mere existence of a thread discussing his books, which you self admittingly haven't even read?

I don't.

Sharkie
Feb 4, 2013

by Fluffdaddy
I'm glad he described where the monster ejaculated, after it raped a woman to death. That really helps me understand how it would be bad, if monsters were real.

Mr. Soul
Nov 5, 2011
It's only getting weird to me now I'm in warrior prophet, the not-mongol stabbed a bunch of holes in the ground and hosed them while crying. Everybody else crying all the time too.

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer
Man, if the manuscript made the editor quit without notice, I'm kind of even more intrigued. What new and terrible things will Bakker write about? I'm waiting. :allears:

akulanization
Dec 21, 2013

Sharkie posted:

I'm glad he described where the monster ejaculated, after it raped a woman to death. That really helps me understand how it would be bad, if monsters were real.

You really have to hand it to the OP for his excellent unintentional honeypot.

savinhill
Mar 28, 2010

akulanization posted:

You really have to hand it to the OP for his excellent unintentional honeypot.

Well, there is "BLACK DEMON SEED" in the thread title too. Pendulous phalli and evil ejaculate are just how Bakker rolls

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

Mr. Soul posted:

It's only getting weird to me now I'm in warrior prophet, the not-mongol stabbed a bunch of holes in the ground and hosed them while crying. Everybody else crying all the time too.

That's one of many reasons I love this book so much. Conan the Barbarian is a neurotic paranoid mess, and Gandalf is crippled by self-doubt and indecision. The only people who act with any certainty are demonstrably insane - with the level of insanity increasing drastically with the level of certainty.

Boing
Jul 12, 2005

trapped in custom title factory, send help

A human heart posted:

Can you provide some examples of this guy's good writing and philosophical ideas?

I loved Prince of Nothing and I even loved Neuropath, I count it among my favourite books. It gets a lot of flak for being pointlessly dark and gruesome, like this:

Popular Human posted:

The best part of that is when you read Neuropath and discover that passage wasn't Bakker being '2Xtreme!' for the sake of showing how horrible his villains are - that's Bakker showing restraint.

But I don't think Bakker is a weird sex creep who keeps letting in show in his fiction. I think he's got a really good idea of how to freak out the human brain and he's really good at communicating utter abhorrence. Not in a horror way that spooks you and creates that atmosphere of dread, but in a way that makes you feel deep-seated visceral and moral disgust. And that's the point - the Inchoroi and the Black Demon Seed and all the poo poo in Neuropath, aren't supposed to be scary in a Lovecraftian "this is beyond human understanding" way, but in a very specific "this is what repulses the human brain" way. The terrifying body horror isn't just there, it's there to juxtapose with how the characters (like Shaeonanra and Esmenet and that girl from Neuropath) who want it, who exult in it at the time, precisely because that contrast is so shocking to us and hard for us to deal with.

I lump that kind of criticism in with the kind of criticism PoN gets for its "Kellhus as Mary Sue" thing - it's a surface reading that doesn't give him enough credit. Bakker is extremely intelligent, very well-read in philosophy and psychology, and in all his books is constantly trying to hammer in a very specific neurophilosophical point - that the human mind is not transcendental. You might not think you want to cut up your own body or gently caress a weird rear end sex alien, but you are not in control. You are not so smart. Everything that makes up your will and your being and your identity can be tweaked and toyed with, and this is what totally terrifies him so much that he keeps writing books about it.

I really like exploring the parallels between PoN and Neuropath. Both are about puppet strings - everyone has them, and everyone is pulling on other peoples' puppet strings all the time, but once you see the strings, freedom and identity and humanity no longer makes sense. Kellhus sees all the strings, and uses them, and so he makes people love him, he forces loyalty and submission with utter certainty because he knows the outcome - but what he's doing isn't mind control, he's just saying words, which is what everyone is doing all the time. Somehow it feels like he is taking away peoples' freedom, but only because he knows more. Neuropath is the extension of that principle into plausible near-future neuroscience - all your loves and fears and cognitions are just part of a system, and we may well get to a point where we are in control of that system. Feeling love because of years of affection and closeness, and feeling love because a machine directly manipulates your brain into feeling it, can be exactly the same emotion. It seems very different because of ~science~, but it's exactly the same thing as Kellhus is doing with his voice and his expressions - he knows how to make you feel, and he can push the necessary buttons to get you there.

It also makes me think of pick-up artists, who we think of as really creepy because they operationalise and map out "the art of seduction", but are really just giving desperate nerds scripts to follow when talking to other people, to say the same things that come naturally to other people. Somehow knowing what you're doing is creepier than just winging it, and there's no real reason for that except that humans don't make sense when you look too closely. "You only care about the buttons that you see" keeps coming up in Bakker's work in some variation or another. We're constantly pushing each other's buttons, it's totally normal everyday stuff, but we never feel as if our freedoms are impinged upon because of it. So what makes it different when the buttons are pushed on purpose?

It's definitely not a book I would recommend to everyone. Not just because of its weird dark gruesome stuff, but because it takes a certain kind of philosophical open-mindedness to really appreciate (or the kind of cynical psychological education that means you've already come to this conclusion).

Popular Human posted:

I was browsing the old thread and I just remembered we decided the No-God was a helicopter. Those were good times. WHAT DO YOU SEE WHUP WHUP WHUP WHUP

I really want to know more about this

genericnick
Dec 26, 2012

Neuropath isn't bad because of the body horror. Neuropath is a bad book because Bakker loves his theory so much that everyone who gets to hear about it reacts very strongly. For four fiths of the thing. Only then did Bakker catch himself and has a neighbor tell the mc to shut up. I know that later revelations change that somehow. But not enough by far. This could have been a really great horror novel. But it was written as a thriller and in this it blows.

Wheeee
Mar 11, 2001

When a tree grows, it is soft and pliable. But when it's dry and hard, it dies.

Hardness and strength are death's companions. Flexibility and softness are the embodiment of life.

That which has become hard shall not triumph.

Mr. Soul posted:

It's only getting weird to me now I'm in warrior prophet, the not-mongol stabbed a bunch of holes in the ground and hosed them while crying. Everybody else crying all the time too.

This thread sold me on these books despite my hating most fantasy garbage, because this Bakker dude looks to be both hosed in the head and smarter than the retards whining about him online.

How can these be bad?

savinhill
Mar 28, 2010

Wheeee posted:



How can these be bad?

They're not, all it comes down to is if it's something not to your particular tastes, even though uptight nerds will try to convince you otherwise for whatever reasons they have

Boing
Jul 12, 2005

trapped in custom title factory, send help
I think the non-Mongol is supposed to be a non-Scythian really

Rime
Nov 2, 2011

by Games Forum

Boing posted:

I think the non-Mongol is supposed to be a non-Scythian really

With more than a dash of Cimmerian thrown in. One of the things I enjoy about Bakker is that he heavily lifts his cultures from world history, but blends and tweaks them enough that you can't point at one and say "This is supposed to be X". Unlike other authors *cough* GRRM *cough*, where they pretty much just ramp a group like the Mongols up to 11 and call it a day.

On that note, he's one of very few authors outside of Tolkien to really do "decline and fall of ancient civilization" well. You have this vast wasteland / wilderness north of Nansur, once home to two successive empires which were just miles more populated and advanced than the pitiful realm that humanity still holds, but the existence of all of that is largely considered a myth outside of the Gnostic schoolmen. Sure, there's still Sakarpus surviving up there, but the Sranc ensure that they rarely ever make contact with the south. Nobody goes up there, nobody loots, they just stay and squabble over what little they own in the south. I love this because it's exactly what has happened over the course of our own history, for thousands of years. Empires rise, empires fall, and within a few centuries nobody even remembers that they existed. After long enough, they even fade out of myth, until thousands of years later we dig up a massive city like Teishebaini and go "Whoa, poo poo, here's a whole chapter in human history that we never even knew existed. Millions of lives, stories, ideas, washed into the gutter by the blood of the people which held them." It really struck me in, I think, White Luck Warrior, where they camp out on the remains of one of the major cities of the north and there's just loving nothing there except some crumbled walls in the forest. And then you have the Great Ordeal, slowly pushing the borders of the realm back through these ancient ruins, like Byzantium reclaiming the realms of Alexander a thousand years after their fall.

It's a refreshing change from the whole "Oh yeah, powerful ancient empire from a millenia ago that we know all the details about, lets go find their perfectly preserved cities and get this wicked artifact." I can overlook the poo poo plot in the second trilogy and the body horror because the world building is designed for history nerds like me. :science:

Mr. Soul
Nov 5, 2011
I'm in thousand fold thought now and I loving HATE kellhus, and I'm pretty sure that's intentional. I don't know how anyone could call him a mary-sue when he's so loathsome and amoral. He's good at everything yeah but he doesn't do anything for selfless reasons and I don't think he truly cares for anyone or anything. There's even a chapter I just got through were akka sees past his face and realizes he's pretty much the loving devil.

I'm still not sure what he wants, really, but he'll put the world to the sword to get it. I hope he dies gruesomely.

A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

savinhill posted:

They're not, all it comes down to is if it's something not to your particular tastes, even though uptight nerds will try to convince you otherwise for whatever reasons they have

This book definitely isn't bad or for nerds, said the man with the game of thrones gangtag.

Mr. Soul
Nov 5, 2011
I like books where dudes have swords and beards and dumb weird cultures goddamnit

A human heart
Oct 10, 2012

Mr. Soul posted:

I like books where dudes have swords and beards and dumb weird cultures goddamnit

Have you considered reading The Bible, by God?

Libluini
May 18, 2012

I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...
Grimey Drawer

A human heart posted:

Have you considered reading The Bible, by God?

The Vedas are better, if you want weird cultures and stories.

Also it has one up over the bible because it comes from the one true religion

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Boing posted:

It's definitely not a book I would recommend to everyone. Not just because of its weird dark gruesome stuff, but because it takes a certain kind of philosophical open-mindedness to really appreciate (or the kind of cynical psychological education that means you've already come to this conclusion).
See, I'd have an issue with this one because it's entirely possible to have a psychological education and not come to this conlusion. Neuropath just feels like Bakker trying to preach this as One True Way.

Boing
Jul 12, 2005

trapped in custom title factory, send help

anilEhilated posted:

See, I'd have an issue with this one because it's entirely possible to have a psychological education and not come to this conlusion. Neuropath just feels like Bakker trying to preach this as One True Way.

What's your take on it? I ask because I really buy into the idea and it seems to follow from all the premises of modern science, I'd be curious to hear why you disagree.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
Depends on what you mean by premises of modern science, I guess. I have a mere bachelor in psychology but if that taught me anything it's that we have absolutely no loving idea how the mind works and all our theories stop working at different points. Neurology and brain chemistry don't fully explain identity; similarly while you can manufacture and manipulate social constructs, you cannot effectively predict responses to them on an individual basis without knowing about the person's experience (which tends to be moderately difficult to impossible). I haven't finished Neuropath, but in the fantasy books a lot of the stuff Kellhus does seems implausible - particularly the way he convinces Achamian smells more of plot contrivance than actual manipulation, the buttons he's pushing working because the author wants them to.

My main issue, however, is that there from what I've seen there isn't a single bit of acknowledgment that he could be wrong, that there could be some transcendence, hell, that there could be something he didn't think of. I agree Bakker is extremely well-read and very intelligent - but he also reads as extremely arrogant and way too convinced of his own infalliblity.

anilEhilated fucked around with this message at 20:13 on Jan 24, 2016

Wheeee
Mar 11, 2001

When a tree grows, it is soft and pliable. But when it's dry and hard, it dies.

Hardness and strength are death's companions. Flexibility and softness are the embodiment of life.

That which has become hard shall not triumph.

I'm only halfway through the first book, but:

The prose is not transcendent of the genre, Bakker is no Wolfe, but it does exceed most examples in the genre including goon favourite trashbins such as Sanderson and whoever writes those Dresden books.

It's not stupid, nor does it assume that I am stupid; I grew up reading fantasy novels because they were entertaining escapism, then trailed off as an adult because puerile power fantasies stopped being satisfying. This appears to be a book about ideas more so than nerd wankery over D&D magic systems.

Esmenet, the supposedly problematic whore, is my favourite character thus far and feels like an authentic take on the horrifying reality of being an intelligent and curious individual consigned to life in the lowest socioeconomic class.

The few sex scenes are written better than what's in most other genre fiction, including popular favourites such as GRRM's novels. I understand this may change.

Cnaiur the neurotic, depressed, and possibly closeted barbarian owns.

Achamian is a class traitor.

I know it's too early to pass judgement on this single novel, let alone the series whole, but up to this point the only real criticisms appear to be of the standard fantasy genre issues of it having imaginary names and not being ~*true literature*~. Given the megathreads and popularity of some truly lovely books on this forum I took the nature of the mixed response Bakker got as something of an endorsement, and so far I'm happy that I did.

Maybe it all eventually falls apart Stephen King style though, I don't know.

Strom Cuzewon
Jul 1, 2010

anilEhilated posted:

Depends on what you mean by premises of modern science, I guess. I have a mere bachelor in psychology but if that taught me anything it's that we have absolutely no loving idea how the mind works and all our theories stop working at different points. Neurology and brain chemistry don't fully explain identity; similarly while you can manufacture and manipulate social constructs, you cannot effectively predict responses to them on an individual basis without knowing about the person's experience (which tends to be moderately difficult to impossible). I haven't finished Neuropath, but in the fantasy books a lot of the stuff Kellhus does seems implausible - particularly the way he convinces Achamian smells more of plot contrivance than actual manipulation, the buttons he's pushing working because the author wants them to.

My main issue, however, is that there from what I've seen there isn't a single bit of acknowledgment that he could be wrong, that there could be some transcendence, hell, that there could be something he didn't think of. I agree Bakker is extremely well-read and very intelligent - but he also reads as extremely arrogant and way too convinced of his own infalliblity.

You've run into part of the problem I had with Neuropath, and it's very much a problem in Bakker's writing, rather than in his character. The books are vastly more certain than the author.

In the Afterword he explains his motivation in writing Neuropath - that modern psychology is starting to indicate that it might one day be able to maybe start to map desires and decisions in the human brain (try and cram a few more caveats into the first sentence, cos we are a loving long way off doing that) and that he's intrigued by what it would mean if psychology was actually successful in doing that. It's in a large part speculative. He singles out the example that Bible uses, about how brain scans can show that "the brain" makes a decision before your consciousness is actually aware of it. There's been some studies that kind of show that already, but Bakker thinks that they're empirically and methodologically shakey. But his philosophy, and the basic fundamentals of psychology (I'll leave the details to Boing) give him no reason to believe that we won't eventually show that. Neuropath is basically an exploration of what that would mean.

Reading the Afterword made me really angry for a while (as does lots of what I read, I think you've seen that) because I find it incomprehensible that he would want to write a book about things that haven't been proven yet, to write a book presenting an argument (sorry, an Argument) that the author doesn't actually believe in.

The relationship between Bakker and the ideas in his work is something really interesting to me - and the fact that I just wrote that phrase is a ringing endorsement of Bakker over every fantasy writer bar Gurm and Erikkson. He's a cynic, no doubt about it, and probably a nihilist, but not to the same degree as the ideas expressed in the books. Because no matter how compelling the Argument might be, nobody is ever going to believe it. Not fully, not down in their bones. Why? Because it's impossible to function as a human being without believing you have something resembling a will. Bakker rejects the extreme nihilism of Neuropaths and Dunyain but he fully admits he has no reason to

It's like Hume and the problem of induction. Induction relies on the assumption of consistency in the universe ("i have seen things this way in the past, therefore they will be this way in the future") but the only evidence we have towards that is itself inductive ("i have seen things continue to be the way I have previously seen them to be") and so we set ourselves in a nonsense circular argument. From this we should, strictly speaking, reject all possibility of ever gaining any knowledge about how the world works. But nobody believes that. Because if we did we'd go insane, and then we'd starve to death because we'd have no reason to believe that food would actually keep us alive.

In summary - Neuropath isn't very well written if it's aimed at a general audience. The reason Boing responded so well to it is because he's familiar enough with psychology to known which bits are speculation, and which are just extensions of existiing ideas and theories. If you're unfamiliar with psychology it comes off a bit Dan Brownish, with big long intellectual sounding lectures that turn out to be compete nonsense.

PoN is much more effective at handling these ideas (Xinemus :stonk:) because it's less about the ideas, and more about the characters responding to those ideas. And because "what if there was a super genius who could predict and control all emotion and motivation" is much easier to accept in fantasy than techno-thriller.


Edit: Also, Wheee's got the books sussed out pretty fast. He and Mr Soul should give us updates and continual speculation on what Kellhus is really up to. I've got a pretty good idea, but it's always fun and interesting to get a neophyte's take on it.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer

Strom Cuzewon posted:

Reading the Afterword made me really angry for a while (as does lots of what I read, I think you've seen that) because I find it incomprehensible that he would want to write a book about things that haven't been proven yet, to write a book presenting an argument (sorry, an Argument) that the author doesn't actually believe in.
This is really interesting and actually makes me sympathise with him a fair bit more because it shows second thought that's really not apparent from the books themselves.

Darkrenown
Jul 18, 2012
please give me anything to talk about besides the fact that democrats are allowing millions of americans to be evicted from their homes

Mr. Soul posted:

I'm in thousand fold thought now and I loving HATE kellhus, and I'm pretty sure that's intentional. I don't know how anyone could call him a mary-sue when he's so loathsome and amoral. He's good at everything yeah but he doesn't do anything for selfless reasons and I don't think he truly cares for anyone or anything. There's even a chapter I just got through were akka sees past his face and realizes he's pretty much the loving devil.

Sure, the reader can see Kellhus is awful, but everyone in world seems to love him (aside from the Byzantium prince who just seems to hate him because he's so popular) and he's great at everything. Isn't that normal for a mary-sue then? Even Emo-Conan who started out hating him and resisting him falls for him in 2 books or so. Akka gives away his magic-secrets and is still besties with him when he comes back from being tortured and finds him screwing his wife, I didn't get to where Akka sees he's the devil, so it's nice he finally does, but I don't think I'll read any more.

Srice
Sep 11, 2011

If he were a mary sue then the intent would be for the reader to like and agree with everything he does as well.

Boing
Jul 12, 2005

trapped in custom title factory, send help

anilEhilated posted:

Depends on what you mean by premises of modern science, I guess. I have a mere bachelor in psychology but if that taught me anything it's that we have absolutely no loving idea how the mind works and all our theories stop working at different points. Neurology and brain chemistry don't fully explain identity; similarly while you can manufacture and manipulate social constructs, you cannot effectively predict responses to them on an individual basis without knowing about the person's experience (which tends to be moderately difficult to impossible). I haven't finished Neuropath, but in the fantasy books a lot of the stuff Kellhus does seems implausible - particularly the way he convinces Achamian smells more of plot contrivance than actual manipulation, the buttons he's pushing working because the author wants them to.

My main issue, however, is that there from what I've seen there isn't a single bit of acknowledgment that he could be wrong, that there could be some transcendence, hell, that there could be something he didn't think of. I agree Bakker is extremely well-read and very intelligent - but he also reads as extremely arrogant and way too convinced of his own infalliblity.

You make it sound like you object to the idea of prediction being possible in practice, when really all Bakker needs is for it to be possible in principle, and explore the implications of it. It makes sense if you think of it as a sci-fi conceit. Nobody writes a sci-fi story and shows second thought in their writing about how "well, probably this method of FTL travel I wrote isn't really that plausible". You just set it up as the premise for the story and move on with it.

Wheeee posted:

The prose is not transcendent of the genre, Bakker is no Wolfe, but it does exceed most examples in the genre including goon favourite trashbins such as Sanderson and whoever writes those Dresden books.

It's not stupid, nor does it assume that I am stupid; I grew up reading fantasy novels because they were entertaining escapism, then trailed off as an adult because puerile power fantasies stopped being satisfying. This appears to be a book about ideas more so than nerd wankery over D&D magic systems.

Glad you're liking it. I also dig Bakker's prose for how introspective and thoughtful it is. Conversations are broken up line-by-line while the POV character reflects on their past and their feelings. It's slow but I really respect seeing that inner life so thoroughly.

Darkrenown posted:

Sure, the reader can see Kellhus is awful, but everyone in world seems to love him (aside from the Byzantium prince who just seems to hate him because he's so popular) and he's great at everything. Isn't that normal for a mary-sue then? Even Emo-Conan who started out hating him and resisting him falls for him in 2 books or so. Akka gives away his magic-secrets and is still besties with him when he comes back from being tortured and finds him screwing his wife, I didn't get to where Akka sees he's the devil, so it's nice he finally does, but I don't think I'll read any more.

Kellhus isn't a character through whom the author is living some kind of power fantasy. He's a plot device, a force of nature. If Prince of Nothing was a scifi story, he'd be the AI cyborg terminator. The point is, yes, that everyone loves him, because that's his power. His control over others is what makes him scary, and what drives the actual main characters into ever-deepening grief and ruin as they submit to his whims.

Sorry if all this comes across as me sounding like an apologist, but I really dig these books and I want other people to see them in the same way that I do.

anilEhilated
Feb 17, 2014

But I say fuck the rain.

Grimey Drawer
I don't object to the idea being the centerpiece of a story, but with (what I read of) Neuropath it feels the story is just background for the idea. That doesn't really click with me as a reader.

Wheeee
Mar 11, 2001

When a tree grows, it is soft and pliable. But when it's dry and hard, it dies.

Hardness and strength are death's companions. Flexibility and softness are the embodiment of life.

That which has become hard shall not triumph.

Darkrenown posted:

Sure, the reader can see Kellhus is awful, but everyone in world seems to love him (aside from the Byzantium prince who just seems to hate him because he's so popular) and he's great at everything.

The very first person from outside his birthplace that Kellhus meets is a guileless innocent man, living far from society in retreat from his grief over a tragic loss. This man through direct action saves Kellhus' life and invites him into his own.

Kellhus repays this man by manipulating him and training him like a dog, leveraging the man's grief and vulnerability to serve Kellhus' own ends, and ultimately leaves the man to die when the effort required to save him exceeds the material value of doing so.

He is loved via cynical manipulation, and this is never implied to be a good thing.

I don't think this is for you.

Boing posted:

His control over others is what makes him scary, and what drives the actual main characters into ever-deepening grief and ruin as they submit to his whims.

Cnaiur is seemingly still hosed up by the time he spent with Kellhus' dad decades prior.

Wheeee fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Jan 25, 2016

genericnick
Dec 26, 2012

anilEhilated posted:

Depends on what you mean by premises of modern science, I guess. I have a mere bachelor in psychology but if that taught me anything it's that we have absolutely no loving idea how the mind works and all our theories stop working at different points. Neurology and brain chemistry don't fully explain identity; similarly while you can manufacture and manipulate social constructs, you cannot effectively predict responses to them on an individual basis without knowing about the person's experience (which tends to be moderately difficult to impossible). I haven't finished Neuropath, but in the fantasy books a lot of the stuff Kellhus does seems implausible - particularly the way he convinces Achamian smells more of plot contrivance than actual manipulation, the buttons he's pushing working because the author wants them to.

My main issue, however, is that there from what I've seen there isn't a single bit of acknowledgment that he could be wrong, that there could be some transcendence, hell, that there could be something he didn't think of. I agree Bakker is extremely well-read and very intelligent - but he also reads as extremely arrogant and way too convinced of his own infalliblity.

Kellhus is the living and breathing incarnation of the Argument from Neuropath. But in a typical fantasy book the Argument would be wrong. Consider the very first chapter: He starts by explaining how the hermit's world is filled with ghosts, demons, gods and magic, because he cannot grasp where his thoughts and feelings come from. Immediately afterwards he meets some of those ghosts and gets beaten up by sorcery.

genericnick fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Jan 25, 2016

Corvinus
Aug 21, 2006

Darkrenown posted:

Sure, the reader can see Kellhus is awful, but everyone in world seems to love him (aside from the Byzantium prince who just seems to hate him because he's so popular) and he's great at everything. Isn't that normal for a mary-sue then? Even Emo-Conan who started out hating him and resisting him falls for him in 2 books or so. Akka gives away his magic-secrets and is still besties with him when he comes back from being tortured and finds him screwing his wife, I didn't get to where Akka sees he's the devil, so it's nice he finally does, but I don't think I'll read any more.

Aren't typical Mary Sues loved by the other characters because they're supposedly so inherently benevolent and virtuous, and even written that way by the author? Mary Sues piss me off normally but I find Kelhus tolerable because Bakker writes him as an amoral psycopath.

I also personally like the ambiguity of whether Kelhus does something because he's a smart fucker, or because he's off his loving rocker.

Mr. Soul
Nov 5, 2011
I'm expecting a scene where he's undone by that certainty that made him leave the trapper. And (big thousand fold thought spoilers) Cnaiur's time riding with the consult creatures has been hosed up and awesome. I think the consult is similar to Clive Barker's cenobites at this point. Reaching for ever more hosed up vices and whatnot. I'm expecting some reveals as Cnaiur goes on but I've had a feeling that he'll get got soon since like halfway through warrior prophet.

Darkrenown
Jul 18, 2012
please give me anything to talk about besides the fact that democrats are allowing millions of americans to be evicted from their homes

Wheeee posted:

He is loved via cynical manipulation, and this is never implied to be a good thing.

I don't think this is for you.

Excect by the wealth, power, and near-universal love he gains from it? As I said the reader knows what a massive dick he is, but very few people in-universe do. It got tiresome seeing this jerk go through almost constant success.

And I know it's not for me, I also said I gave up on reading it.

KOGAHAZAN!!
Apr 29, 2013

a miserable failure as a person

an incredible success as a magical murder spider

Darkrenown posted:

Excect by the wealth, power, and near-universal love he gains from it? As I said the reader knows what a massive dick he is, but very few people in-universe do. It got tiresome seeing this jerk go through almost constant success.

I think we might be having a problem with the multiple overlapping meanings of "good" here.

Kellhus' manipulation is presented as "good", in the sense that it is an effective and powerful tool. By using it Kellhus is successful in his endeavours.

Kellhus' manipulation is not presented as "good", in the sense that is is not morally or ethically sound. By using it Kellhus brings suffering and misery to those around him.

If you're just not interested in a moral universe where people can be assholes and successful then fair enough.

Seldom Posts
Jul 4, 2010

Grimey Drawer

Autonomous Monster posted:

IIf you're just not interested in a moral universe where people can be assholes and successful then fair enough.

I like the books, and have no problem with this in theory, but when I read them I get the feeling that Bakker is kind of getting off on Kelhus's success. Objectively I see how it's bad, but subjectively the way it's described makes it seem not bad.

Corvinus
Aug 21, 2006
The second trilogy outright makes it plain that a lot of people (of all positions) do not love Kelhus at all. Spoiler about his kids: they're complete monstrosities, that range from mentally unwell to evil as gently caress. Even Kelhus doesn't avoid implications that he's either severely delusional, aligned with the Consult, or even worse.

Corvinus fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Jan 25, 2016

Gazaar
Mar 23, 2005

.txt
Hey guys let's eat some sranc.

Tasty.

savinhill
Mar 28, 2010

Gazaar posted:

Hey guys let's eat some sranc.

Tasty.

I'd rather eat some Non Man and get that superhuman high

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Mr. Soul
Nov 5, 2011
I've really latched on to this stuff. Finished TFT and I was euphoric when akka told kellhus to go gently caress himself right in front of his court. And in the judging eye he's employed a company of sranc hunters to accompany him on a suicide mission in the guise of a treasure hunt. Sranc are the most nastiest orks. Between a possible victory over sranc or certain death of everyone ever by Warhammer orks, 40k every time

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